ND/NF 2011: Team ScreenAnarchy Wraps Up
A shout out to the staff at The Film Society of Lincoln Center and Museum of Modern Art for putting on such a show, and a very special thanks to Seth Hyman and John Wildman at FsLC and Sarah Jarvis at MoMA for providing our intrepid writers with the goods and the goodies.
As the sort of editorial point man for this whole affair (and thus, quite jealous of the people actually getting to see the films) I'm proud to turn it on over to my colleagues, Dustin Chang, Peter Gutierrez and Aaron Krasnov, for a few last words on this year's lineup.
Dustin's Take:
For me the standout was definitely Curling, by French-Canadian director Denis Cote. The film deals with the fragility of modern life and resilence of people in a quiet but meaningful way. Its skeletal narrative comes across as both enigmatic and humanistic. Whereas the other, much louded French-Canadian film, Incendies by Denis Villeneuve, which I had high hopes for, was too heavy-handed to be heartfelt.
Belle Epine, a French coming-of-age film set in the 80s- rotary phone, motorcycle culture, was marginally interesting, due to the presence of its sullen star Léa Seydoux playing a character ten years younger than her age, dealing with her mother's death.
Summer of Goliath, a minimalistic marriage of doc/narrative follows closely to Carlos Reygadas tradition of contemplative filmmaking. The crowd pleaser of the bunch was Ahmad Abdalla's Microphone, a vibrant, colorful love letter to Alexandria, Egypt, foreshadowing the mood of youth in the recent Middle East upheaval.
I'm pretty sure it's largely due to my choices of 6 among 28 features that I ended up watching at this year's ND/NF, but overall, they were pretty disappointing. I was surprised by the lack of Asian films (there are only 2 represented) and the inclusion of Some Days are Better Than Others, a light hipster comedy, representing one of the three American films this year.
Peter's Take:
Some Days Are Better Than Others
I'm not sure if American films should have had a bigger presence in the lineup or if there were titles other than Some Days Are Better Than Others that were worthier of inclusion. But I do think that the film actually wasn't trying to come across as a "light hipster comedy"--with the exception of certain scenes early on, I believe it thought of itself as being very, very serious, perhaps "deceptively" so. The problem is that it goes for the easy laughs late in the third act with its satirical take on those who audition for Reality TV. It also milks the cuteness/likability of its female lead, so that unfortunately overall the film can come across as a comedy that becomes progressively less funny. In other words, more opportunistic than cohesive one way or the other.
Match
Match starts well and
is handsome to look at, but in the end made me feel like I was watching
a very polished student film... or a kind of calling card that shows
what filmmaker Kate Barker-Froyland can do, perhaps with the hope of
getting television work. (I don't mean to be insulting, especially
with so much exciting work being done in TV these days, but that's
what Match reminded me of--a slice of a pilot.) Featuring a
title that puns like an old They Might Be Giants song, Match
unfortunately doesn't follow up with pointed, short-form cleverness
or even simply a single but deeply felt emotion that just nails you.
Instead, the script feels like it makes a gesture in the director of
the latter rather than actually coming from the heart.
Tyrannosaur
Often riveting, and featuring
some of the best screen acting you're likely to see this year,
Tyrannosaur certainly doesn't seem like a first feature from director
Paddy Considine. Peter Mullan is pretty much always great, and his work
here is no exception. Thanks to him, co-star Olivia Colman's affecting
performance, and Considine's extremely solid storytelling, for a good
stretch of Tyrannosaur we get the kind of edgy naturalism that
makes the film feel like a Neo-Kitchen Sink drama done very, very right.
Then comes the third act, though, with its big twist--which is not
bad, actually, but feels at odds with the straight-shooting, no-frills
honesty of the rest of the film. To be fair, Considine the writer does
a nice job tying up the various plotlines and themes by the time the
end credits scroll... but the problem here is that things feel just a
little too neat. Not pat certainly, but nearly so, especially
relative to the rawness and unpredictability we experience early on.
For example, just compare the energy and astonishing depth of the scene
where Mullan first darts into Colman's shop with the safe, rather
ordinary and "inspiring" truths of their final scene together.
Fwd: Update on My Life
I was really unprepared for how much I liked this. Maybe that's because describing Nicky Tavares's half-an-hour doc as a mixture of live-action and animation makes it sound gimmicky or possibly cutesy. Far from it, though. The film is thoughtful throughout, and the use of animation to highlight specific email text is both well done and an efficient way to convey information. Initially Fwd: Update on My Life may seem like just another portrait of a quirky individual, and at some point you might start to wonder where everything is going (I did), but by the gut-wrenching finale all doubts are laid to rest and you realize that Tavares has been playing a deeper game rather masterfully. Not for everyone perhaps, but really rewarding for those who can relate to its themes of starting over, and the sadness that always implicitly attaches itself to that notion.
Attenberg
It might seem lazy to make
the obvious comparison to Dogtooth, and maybe it is, but one
can't help notice that the two films fit really well together, as
if representing two-thirds of an "official trilogy." Both feature
the same ultra-deadpan approach to matters sexual that make certain
scenes both highly uncomfortable and highly memorable, but Attenberg
doesn't go for the creepy as much as the absurdist. Similarly, both
films concern arrested development, but Attenberg operates in
a much less hermetic environment, actually opening things up to include
a best friend and love interest for lead Ariane Labed. The end result, then,
more closely resembles a true coming-of-age film, albeit a pretty iconoclastic
one. By the way, Labed is a key reason to see this film--her performance
will, at least for the duration of the runtime, convince you that actors
are the most courageous artists out there.
Aaron's Take:
Attenberg
I would like to further Peter's notion of a suggested trilogy, initially constructed of Dogtooth and Attenberg. In my mind Dogtooth plays the subjective pathos to Attenberg's examinational ethos. I plan to brand Lanthimos' Alps logos upon release, in support of this notion, regardless of content.
Without diving too far in, as I have a full piece coming shortly, the cadence of this film finds profound brevity in its handling of the contrived interactions between animals. The instinctual games we play with each other and the rituals we undertake as a species. Interspersed with alternating still frames of nature and industry these anthropological vignettes provide a playground for the characters to breathe in. There's quite a bit of good fun.
Attenberg was recently picked up by Strand Releasing, with a release date forthcoming.
Incendies
An immaculately captured, over-described journey into an ethnic land of cyclical oppression, poetically adapted from Wajdi Mouawad's play Scorched. A mystery of inheritance and strife, bonded in the polarity of family. A film that wades into political and religious territory in a way that is too descriptive to be ambiguous and non-identifying enough to be frustrating. The spiraling generations of violence are meant to be generally applicable, though couched in the defined structures of Catholicism and Islam, preventing distance.
As my colleagues have put forth, this
was a year of emphatic point making. The, in case you missed it, we
will be sure to reiterate style of narrative that causes sighs and eye-rolling
amongst those who understood. Attenberg's final shot plays
out this way, an extended hammer blow of purpose. Incendies
incites the same reaction in a less subtle manner deciding to narrate
what has taken place, and forcefully illuminate the nuances that have
occurred. Tyrannosaur also chooses to recapitulate its themes
in overlaid narrative during a final act of violence. I enjoy Peter's
analogy of the sharpie, explanation can often come off patronizing,
and it's this lack of faith in the audience that proves frustrating
in a group of otherwise wonderful films.
Black Power Mixtape 1967 - 1975
At once a powerful vision of the times and at others a histrionic view of poverty. Comprised of footage captured by Swedish journalists from 1967 - 1975, the film attempts to provide a broad look at the black power movement, breaking each year into chapters; with narration provided by prominent afrocentric figures, many with musical backgrounds.
The early stages of the documentary establish a rousing tempo as the likes of Stokely Carmichael, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcom X expound their feelings; accompanied by hip-hop ambiance and verbal poetry. As time progresses the rhythm can't sustain, floundering, as digressions into TV Guide's view of Swedish television and heroin's effect on infants dominate the screen. The rallying cry of betterment for all people, tempered by side notes and an attempt to capture a wide variety of subject matter.
Match
Honestly, not much here. Exacting and form-fitting, with little to ponder after completion. It's as if the director looked at the definition of match and calculatingly applied each definition, and checked list style to a uniform narrative.
Tyrannosaur
To only slightly disagree with Peter, while the film is tidy by the end, and this is quite amazing for a story dealing in these types of themes, I find the symbolism proves more effective than the narrative method. The Incremental shifts in character overshadowed by the compiled situation. The characters able to shamble off into the night, leaving us with the detritus put to film. This is not a knock on the actors, whose exquisite portrayal of tarnished individuals gives the film its power, but a struggle between situation and spirit that embodies what's on display.
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And that's it for this year's ND/NF. Members of our NYC crew (myself included) will be back this spring with coverage from Tribeca, and per usual come summer, the city's most rousing opus, that mutant monstrosity: the New York Asian Film Festival!
